Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/158

150 in a Chinese court. The two Hong merchants assured me that their brother, the Macartney's guarantor, was already in the hands of the magistrates, who had handcuffed him and were threatening him with the bamboo: that an interdiction lay on the Macartney's cargo, and Mr. himself ran no small risk of imprisonment.

Our position was at once absurd and extremely serious. To do him justice, Mr. at once agreed that there could be no question of delivering up Margit: the penalty of her offence, if proved to the satisfaction of the Chinese magistrates, being—I can hardly bring myself to write it—nothing short of strangulation. He could only promise to accept for the while the risks of delay and do his utmost to bribe the magistrates into compromising the matter for a small fine.

He proved as good as his word. For five weeks the Macartney lay at anchor without discharging a pennyweight of her cargo; and every day brought a new threat, edict, or proclamation. At the end of the first week the security merchant was allowed to send his agents to offer a reward of 10,000 dollars to any man of our crew who would swear to having seen the Englishwoman strike the deceased. The agents conducted their parley from a boat, and only made off on being threatened with a bucket of slops. I kept the ship's guns loaded, and set on a double watch, night and day. His wife's peril threw Obed into a state of apprehension so pitiable that I began